Mortality trends in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in Europe between 2013 and 2018.

<bold>Objective:</bold> To provide contemporary estimates of IPF mortality rates across 24 European Countries from 2013 to 2018, using death certificates data from the European Statistics Institution (EUROSTAT) database. <bold>Methods:</bold> We extracted country data for IPF (International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition, ICD-10, code “J84.1”) mortality from the EUROSTAT dataset. We calculated country- age- and sex-specific death registration rates between 2013 and 2018. We used direct standardisation to compare rates between countries. <bold>Results:</bold> The overall standardised mortality rate in EU Countries during this period was 3.90 per 100000 person-years (95%, CI 3.80-3.90), with the rate raising from 3.70 in the 2013 to 4.00 in the 2018. We observed substantial inter-country differences, with the highest rates detected in Ireland, the UK, and Finland, the lowest rate in Bulgaria, and middle rates in Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovenia (Fig 1). <bold>Conclusion:</bold> There are currently more than 17,000 deaths recorded from IPF each year in Europe but the marked geographical differences we observed suggest that this figure may underestimate the true rate considerably.